Chop a small onion and soften it in butter alongside about 100g of bacon. Add 450g of sliced cabbage and a peeled, diced potato to give the soup some body. Cook for a few minutes, season and add 1.1 litres of chickenstock. Cook gently for half an hour, leave to cool a bit then blitz in a blender.

I nearly tripled the recipe to dispose of my whole cabbage mountain. The resulting soup is smooth, tasty, full of depth and flavour. The bacon is indispensable. Finish with croutons and a ‘swirl of cream’.